


keep it

by nightswatch



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 10:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8530285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: Nursey likes to steal Dex's clothes. Dex can't say that he minds all that much.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I decided that there wasn't enough Nursey/Dex fic in the "sharing clothes" tag so here we are.

Dex’s feet are cold when he wakes up.

There’s something warm draped over him, too small to be a blanket. Dex keeps his eyes closed and snuggles into that warmth, trying to ignore that his toes are practically frozen and probably about to fall off at this point. He should be worried about that but it’s too early to get up and his exhaustion is still clinging to his bones.

They celebrated last night’s win at the Haus and Dex remembers falling asleep on the couch, weary, barely able to keep his eyes open any longer. Yes, he slept on that biohazard of a couch. With Nursey nestled against him. He remembers waking up in the middle of the night when Nursey nearly fell off the couch, remembers pressing a kiss to the back of his neck and wrapping his arm around him tightly so he wouldn’t slide off again. Now Dex is alone.

He feels hungover, even though he was barely even drunk last night, feels strangely floaty and at the same time so heavy that he isn’t sure how he isn’t falling right through the couch. He wonders if Nursey is coming back, but he has no idea when he even left, or how he got up without Dex noticing. He usually notices. When they stay over at each other’s dorm rooms, Nursey moves and wiggles and kicks a lot and he isn’t exactly quiet when he slips out of bed.

He managed to sneak away this morning, though. And now it’s just Dex and his frozen toes.

Dex tries, in vain, to pull his legs under whatever’s draped around him. He tugs at it, his fingers smoothing over soft wool. Nursey’s peacoat. Dex recognizes it easily; he’s had his hands on it a lot recently. And under it. And tucked into the pockets. Dex knows that Nursey left that coat on the pile of jackets in the kitchen last night, so he must have gone and dug it up since there’s a bit of a blanket shortage. Normally, especially during the winter months, the couch is covered in blankets, most of them belonging to Bitty, but they all mysteriously disappear whenever the Haus’ doors open for a kegster.

Someone’s whispering across the hall. Bitty, probably. He went upstairs early last night, Jack in tow. He might be up already. And Nursey is probably with him.

A moment later there’s a loud clatter, followed by an even louder, “Shit, I’m sorry.”

Yeah, Nursey is definitely in the kitchen.

Bitty laughs and there’s some muttering. Some giggling. Then there’s the low rumble of Jack’s voice, followed by a, “Shush, sweetheart,” and then there’s silence.

Dex suddenly doesn’t really want to sleep anymore. Because Nursey is across the hall and, fuck, he just really wants to go sit next to Derek Nurse and make a lovesick ass out of himself. This is his life now. For nearly two decades he was the kind of guy who scoffed at happy couples and rolled his eyes when people kissed and couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

And then Nursey came along and now Dex is one of them. And he doesn’t even hate it. Look, Dex tried to hate it. He tried to hate Nursey. He tried to hate being in love with Nursey.

He didn’t want to give in to this, to those silly feelings. Because Nursey is a guy and Dex didn’t– Well, he knew. He knew he was into guys, he definitely, one hundred percent knew. He did a great job of ignoring it, though, and he never saw himself having this. He never told anyone about it. All he ever thought about were the repercussions, the _what if_ s. What if his parents found out, what if this somehow influenced the team in a bad way, what if this messed up his friendship with Nursey. Because they worked hard for that friendship. They’re still working on it every day.

So, for a very long time, the only thought on his mind, on an endless loop, was, _I can’t_. Until, one day, he could. Until, one day, he couldn’t take the tension anymore. Until, one day, he kissed Nursey and everything changed.

Dex sighs and stretches and rubs his eyes. He pushes off Nursey’s coat and drapes it over the back of the couch as he sits up. He can see Bitty wandering about the kitchen, yawning as he opens the fridge door.

With a quiet groan, Dex clambers off the couch. Last night did all kinds of terrible things to his back and having Nursey squished against him wasn’t ideal either. Except that he really likes having Nursey squished against him and he finds it harder and harder to say no to him. Not that Dex wants to say no to him a lot.

The thing is, Dex didn’t calculate for Nursey.

At first he thought this would get too messy, was scared that it wouldn’t work, because, well, it’s him and _Nursey._ He just wasn’t sure about it. And Nursey said, “Hey, it’s chill,” and Dex wanted to punch him in the face for it, but he kissed him instead and it worked out remarkably well. He doesn’t know how. They spent all of last Wednesday fighting about pizza toppings, but at the end of the day Nursey showed up at Dex’s room with some weird French movie that he really wanted to watch and Dex fell asleep, but he fell asleep cuddled against Nursey.

It works. They still fight and it works. They’re still friends and it works.

And Dex calculates for Nursey now. He knows that Nursey will show up to watch movies with him, he knows that they’ll go out for coffee after class, he knows that he’s going to end up sleeping in Nursey’s bed every once in a while. He’s worked Nursey into the equation and it still adds up.

Bitty smiles brightly when Dex shuffles into the kitchen. Dex is handed a cup of coffee approximately half a second later, so he barely has time to assess the current kitchen situation. There are empty and not-so-empty red cups everywhere, although Bitty has apparently already shovelled some of them off the counter so he can get started on breakfast.

“Do you need help?” Dex asks. Bitty taught him how to make pancakes no two weeks ago when one of his classes was cancelled and he came to the Haus to pass the time.

Bitty shakes his head and ushers him out of the way. “No, I’m good, go sit down…”

Okay, so, technically Dex knows how to cook. Or at least he knows enough that he wouldn’t starve if he lived on his own. He can do some pretty good grilled cheese, eggs and bacon, mac and cheese, that sort of stuff. When he was a kid, when his parents worked late, when his brother was out with friends and it was just Dex and his little sister at home, he had to know how to make dinner. If heating up SpaghettiOs counts as making dinner.

What Bitty does is on an entirely different level, though. Bitty actually _cooks_. He makes pancake batter from scratch. It’s what Dex might have deemed a bit too housewife-y a year ago. And now he sneaks off to the Haus to help Bitty bake.

His brother can never know about this.

There are a lot of things his brother – and the rest of his family – can never know about.

Dex’s eyes fall on Nursey, sitting next to Jack at the kitchen table, slumped over, blinking up at Dex from where he just had his forehead resting on his arms. He’s still looking sleepy and rumpled. “Hey, babe.”

Part of Dex expects Ransom and Holster to materialize in the kitchen with the fine jar. They don’t. Small mercies and all that. Jack and Bitty don’t seem to care; anyway, Dex heard Bitty call Jack sweetheart no five minutes ago and it’s not like anyone’s gonna fine him for that. It’s too early for fines. Actually, it’s too early for a lot of things. Being awake, for example.

Okay, it’s past ten, but _too early_ has a wholly different meaning the morning after a kegster.

“Hey,” Dex mumbles and sits down next to Nursey, who shifts against him immediately, his stubble prickly against Dex’s skin when Nursey tucks his face into the crook of Dex’s neck. The Samwell hoodie Nursey is wearing, Dex now sees, isn’t actually Nursey’s.

Jack glances at them. Dex doesn’t miss the smile that flits over his face before he gets up to help Bitty. Dex doesn’t mind that Bitty lets Jack help even though he just shooed away Dex. It’s not like he can go anywhere anymore with Nursey cuddled against him. It’s not like he wants to.

“Did you lose your hoodie?” Dex mumbles to Nursey.

“Hm,” Nursey says, which probably means yes.

Except there’s still that pile of jackets and whatnot on one of the chairs. And there’s Nursey’s hoodie, peeking out, not at all lost. Dex can see half of the white 28.

“Or did you just forget your jersey number?”

“Hm,” Nursey says again. He pulls up his legs and tucks them over Dex’s. “D’you want it back?”

“Keep it,” Dex says.

It’s funny how Nursey makes him feel like this so easily, all warm inside. It’s funny how easy it is for Nursey to make him smile. All it takes, apparently, is for Nursey to pull on the wrong hoodie. All it takes is Nursey making it look like an accident when it so very obviously wasn’t.

All of this, all that relationship crap, comes naturally to Nursey. Even though he once mumbled a very quiet, “I’ve never really done relationships, you know, before you,” to Dex in the middle of the night, Nursey is usually the one who laces their fingers together when they go to Annie’s, he’s the one who sneaks up on Dex and wraps his arms around him, he’s the one who says, “We should hang out tonight.”

Dex took the first step, but Nursey took all the ones that came after, and sometimes Dex feels like he isn’t doing enough, because Nursey always beats him to it. He’s afraid that Nursey doesn’t realise how much he likes him. Loves him.

It’s too early to say that out loud, of course. Much too early. Dex is on the brink of freaking the fuck out whenever he even so much as thinks about it. He’s on the brink of freaking the fuck out all the time even without the added issue of his feelings for Nursey. So he doesn’t think about it. Or at least he tries not to. It obviously doesn’t work that well when he’s sleep-deprived.

Dex drapes an arm around Nursey and kisses the top of his head. He can feel Nursey smile against his skin.

Jack and Bitty aren’t paying them any mind, dancing around each other over at the counter in a way that seems practiced. Although Dex can’t say that he’s really paying attention to them all that much, because Nursey has started kissing the side of his neck. He hates how easy it is for Nursey to distract him. He hates how easy it was for Nursey to figure him out.

Except he really doesn’t hate it.

Holster shuffles into the kitchen, sans pants and in an inside-out shirt. He takes one look around and says, “I’m fining all of you.”

*

“Isn’t it supposed to be getting warmer?” Nursey asks and tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“It _is_ getting warmer,” Dex says. He’s just waited for Nursey outside the English Department’s building for twenty minutes and he isn’t frozen solid, so yes, it’s a lot warmer than last week. Nursey’s class ran late, it always does, but last week Dex nearly froze his balls off while he was waiting. And, yeah, he could have just gone inside, but some of those English Lit kids always give him weird looks, because somehow they just _know_ that he’s not one of them.

“Yeah? Is it, like, one degree warmer than yesterday?”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Dex says, but pulls Nursey closer to him, arm slung around his waist. For once, he was quicker than Nursey. “How was your lecture?”

Nursey starts talking about Christina Rossetti and while Dex has no idea who Christina Rossetti is and finds it a little hard to follow when Nursey talks about goblins and brotherhoods and– seriously, he has no idea what’s going on. And Dex gets distracted just _looking_ at him. But he likes hearing Nursey talk when he isn’t being obnoxious about something, so he doesn’t interrupt him.

Dex smiles guiltily when Nursey says, “I lost you, didn’t I? Sorry, I–” Nursey breaks off mid-sentence, wrinkles his nose and sneezes.

“Bless you,” Dex mutters.

Nursey sneezes again.

“For fuck’s sake…” Dex lets go of Nursey and tugs off his scarf, then he pulls at Nursey’s sleeve to keep him from walking away. “I swear, if you get sick, I’m gonna kill you,” he says as he winds his scarf around Nursey’s neck. “We have a game on Friday.”

“I think killing me might be counterproductive.”

“Fuck off,” Dex says. “And button up your coat.”

“Sure, mom.”

“Or don’t,” Dex says and gives him a shove.

Nursey shoves him back and then catches his hand. “How are your hands so warm?”

“Guess I’m just not as chill as you are.”

Dex can’t believe that he’s doing this. Holding a boy’s hand. In public. People are walking past them and no one cares. Dex is still hiding, though. Maybe not here, not at Samwell, but as soon as he goes home… Dex sighs.

Nursey shoots him a sidelong glance. He knows that something’s up, but he’s not saying anything. A few weeks ago he would have and then Dex would have told him that it was nothing because he didn’t want to talk about it and then Nursey would have insisted that there was obviously _something_ going on and Dex would have snapped at him because he just wanted him to let it go. Now Nursey only squeezes his hand and Dex doesn’t need to ask to know that it means, _I’m here_.

They walk on in silence and Nursey doesn’t say anything until they reach their dorm. “Do you have a lot of homework?” he asks.

It’s Monday afternoon and Dex does have homework, but it’s homework that can wait, at least for a little while. “Why?”

“Do you wanna come with me and warm me up a bit?” Nursey asks, leaning closer until the tips of their noses are almost touching. “Take a nap with me?”

Dex gives him a kiss, a quick one, because he can’t help himself, and says, “Fine.”

Nursey tugs him up the stairs and into his room. It’s a godawful mess, but what else is new. Dex chucks his jacket on the chair and sits down on Nursey’s bed, which is really the only surface that isn’t covered in clothes or books or notes. Nursey is quick to shuck off his coat and Dex’s scarf and then crawls over him, kissing Dex’s neck before he moves up to his jaw, to his lips.

Nursey’s stubble is scratchy against his skin and Dex huffs at him and Nursey laughs because he knows that Dex doesn’t actually mind. God, there are no words for how much he doesn’t mind. He remembers waking up with stubble burn on his thighs for the first time, remembers the satisfied smirk on Nursey’s face, remembers feeling warm and loose and content, and the memory of it makes his breath hitch, or maybe it’s just the feeling of Nursey sucking a bruise into his skin right at the base of his throat.

“I thought I was supposed to warm you up, not the other way around,” Dex says. Not that he minds being entirely at Nursey’s mercy. He doesn’t mind in the slightest.

“I guess I just couldn’t help myself,” Nursey says, his fingers slipping under Dex’s shirt. “Anyway, I’m not that cold anymore.”

Dex tries to bite back a smile when Nursey’s hands wander up to his chest, fingertips tickling his skin. He can’t suppress a shiver and Nursey hums happily like that was the exact reaction he was hoping for. Nursey’s hands are warm now, his touches still light and Dex hates that he is so ticklish. Nursey knows that he’s ticklish, he fucking knows, and he’s doing this on purpose.

“Nursey,” Dex says and makes sure that Nursey hears the complaint in it.

Nursey’s hands are gone a moment later. “What?”

“You know exactly what–” Dex wheezes when Nursey’s hands are back, now on his sides, fingers moving quickly, deliberately. Dex laughs, helpless as Nursey tickles him.

Dex tries to catch Nursey’s wrists, but Nursey moves too quickly, still getting in a poke to Dex’s ribs here and there. They’re both laughing as Dex manages to wrestle Nursey off of him, well aware that this might end up with one or both of them on the floor. He makes sure to shove Nursey in direction of the wall and then clambers on top of him. Nursey goes for one more poke, then he gives up and lets Dex pin his wrists to the bed.

Dex lets go when it’s clear that Nursey has surrendered, smiling up at Dex, his eyes half-lidded, his hair a mess. Dex has no idea how Nursey manages to look good literally all the time, even when he’s rumpled or sweaty or hasn’t slept all night. It’s a bit unfair.

Nursey closes his eyes and yawns. Right, they were going to take a nap. Dex shifts off Nursey and tucks himself against him.

“Later…” Nursey says.

“Later?”

“Yeah,” Nursey says, hand smoothing down Dex’s back to his ass. “ _Later_.”

Dex hums. _Later_ sounds good to him.

Legs tangled, Nursey’s fingers curled into his shirt, Dex quickly dozes off. The first time he and Nursey slept in the same bed and Nursey wrapped himself around Dex like this, Dex was convinced that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep like this. He did, though, about two minutes later.

Still, their dorm beds are less than ideal and every time they squeeze themselves into one of them for the night, they constantly wake each other up or nearly push each other off the bed, which is why they’ve talked Lardo into putting them in the same room during roadies. She only agreed to it after they promised her about a hundred times that they wouldn’t murder each other.

And there’s a chance that next year things will be completely different. Dex hopes that he’s fixed enough things around the Haus to get dibs from either Lardo or Ransom or Holster. But he can’t do much about that except for praying to the dibs gods and fixing that hellish dryer over and over again. Anyway, he likes tinkering away at stuff. It doesn’t feel all that much like a chore. _It’d be nice, wouldn’t it?_ Dex thinks as he falls asleep. Living at the Haus. With Nursey. Helping Bitty cook dinner. Watching games with everyone. It’d be nice.

Dex wakes up, Nursey still clinging to him, when his phone starts ringing in his bag.

“Ignore it,” Nursey mumbles.

And Dex is tempted to just stay in bed with him, but what if it’s important? He clambers over Nursey, still a little sluggish, and is halfway across the room when the ringing stops. His phone chimes with a text a moment later.

The missed call is from Chowder; the text is as well.

“Chowder needs help with an assignment,” Dex says.

Nursey huffs and turns over, blinking at him sleepily. “Man, you’re like Batman. Homework Batman.”

“You’re not funny.” Dex pulls on his jacket and grabs his bag. “I’ll come back…”

“Later?”

“Yeah,” Dex says, “later.”

“Hey, Dex,” Nursey says when Dex turns to leave. “Your scarf.”

“Keep it. And actually _wear_ it. If you’re sick on Friday–”

A lazy grin spreads over Nursey’s face. “You’ll kill me, I know.” He blows Dex a kiss. “See you later, babe.”

Dex flips him off before he slips out the door with a ridiculously broad smile on his face.

*

It’s 3:28 AM and Dex is wide awake. He’s sure that he was asleep before, he’s sure he fell asleep when Nursey did, hours ago, Nursey wrapped around him tightly, too warm, too heavy, but exactly where Dex wanted him. But now it’s 3:28, no, 3:29 AM, and Dex can’t go back to sleep.

It’s two months until they’re all going home, two months and he’s only a summer away from being a junior, it’s two months until Dex won’t see Nursey for an indeterminable amount of time. Two months are a long time, but then again they really aren’t. Two months can go by in the blink of an eye.

They’ve made vague plans.

“I’ll come up to Maine during the summer,” Nursey said only a couple of days ago and sounded like he was actually excited about spending time in a sleepy small town, “and if you want, you can come to my place and I’ll do all that horrible touristy shit with you, it’ll be great.”

They haven’t discussed that Dex can’t really afford going to New York and they haven’t discussed that Dex’s family doesn’t know about them, that it would be a compromise, and a bad one, if Nursey came to Maine. They couldn’t be like they are here.

Going home seems impossible. It feels to Dex like he has to go back to being someone he hasn’t been in months.

He knows that there’s nothing he can do about it. Well. He could tell his parents the truth. And hope that– No, he can’t tell them. He just can’t. But he’s been thinking about it, he’s been thinking about what they might say, what they might do, he’s been going over and over about what they said in the past, about– Dex tells himself to breathe.

Half past three in the morning is not a good time to freak out. But right now everything feels like it’s too much. He’s used to that, in a way. He’s thinking about too many things, he’s thinking about going home, and finals, and Nursey, and hockey, and hiding, and studying, and being away from Nursey for the summer, and he can’t concentrate on a single one of them.

Dex can deal with finals, he can deal with the studying, he can deal with hockey and with being away from Nursey, he can deal with hiding their relationship from his parents over the summer, but he can’t deal with all of that at the same time. And he’s going to miss Nursey.

God, if Nursey was awake, he’d tell him to chill. _Chill_. Dex has never been good at that, he’s always felt everything so much, everything’s always too much.

_Breathe_.

He absent-mindedly runs his fingers up and down Nursey’s spine, but it’s no good. It barely distracts him. All he can think about is that he can’t freak out while Nursey is here, because Nursey… God, Nursey would try to calm him down, wouldn’t he? He’d mumble to him, would recite poetry that Dex doesn’t quite understand. Dex wants to wake him up, but it’s the middle of the night. Nursey wouldn’t mind, of course he wouldn’t mind, but Dex can do this on his own.

He’s okay. It’s okay.

It’s _March_. He still has weeks to figure most of this out. He tries to think of something else. He thinks about sitting by the Pond with Nursey, thinks about Nursey trying to steal his brownie, thinks about Nursey’s cold hands slipping under his jacket and about Nursey kissing his cheek, the tip of his nose cold, and he thinks about tugging his beanie over Nursey’s head and saying, “Keep it,” because Nursey always loses all of his crap, hats included.

He tries to think about all of that, tries to think about that beanie, the only one that Nursey hasn’t managed to lose, tries to think about Nursey wearing it every day even though it’s starting to get warmer. He tells himself that everything is fine.

But it’s still too warm in his room and he still feels like he can’t breathe.

“Nursey,” Dex say. He wasn’t going to wake him up, but–

Nursey groans quietly and nuzzles against his neck. “Did I snore?”

“No,” Dex breathes out.

Nursey pulls him closer. “Am I shoving you off the bed again?” His voice is rough, sleepy. If Dex shuts the hell up right now, Nursey will go right back to sleep. He probably won’t even remember that Dex woke him up in the morning.

“No, it’s fine,” Dex says. His voice cracks, but maybe Nursey isn’t awake enough to notice.

“Dex?”

Well, he sounds wide awake now.

“It’s fine,” Dex says again. Why did he have to wake him up? He tries to keep his voice steady and adds, “Go back to sleep.”

“Hey,” Nursey says. He shifts and Dex can feel him fumbling for the lamp.

Dex grabs Nursey’s hand. “Don’t. Please.”

“Okay,” Nursey says and lies back down, his hand dropping on Dex’s chest. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Dex says, even though he does know, but _I don’t know_ seems easier than explaining that he’s upset about a bunch of ridiculous things that aren’t even that big of a deal. “I can’t sleep.”

Nursey hums and tugs at Dex’s shirt. “Come here?”

Dex curls against Nursey and he’s so glad he woke him up. Nursey holds him tightly and Dex doesn’t even know why, but it helps. It’s like Nursey is helping him keep himself together somehow.

And now he can’t help but think about all those weeks stretching out in front of him, of that long summer. Nursey’s not going to be there. Dex got so used to him, got so used to having him around. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when there’s a seven-hour drive between them. Maybe eight. Dex doesn’t even have a car. Nursey doesn’t have one either, he lives in Manhattan, for fuck’s sake.

But it’s only March.

Nursey kisses his forehead and starts humming. Dex recognizes the song; Nursey has it on his iPod and sometimes he’ll give his headphones to Dex to listen to whatever he’s listening to. Dex makes a point in complaining about the indie hipster shit that Nursey usually listens to, but sometimes it’s not that bad. Although at this point Dex feels like he can’t take back the _indie hipster shit_ thing.

The humming eventually stops and Dex isn’t any closer to falling asleep, but at least he’s remembered how to take deep breaths.

“Hey, Dex,” Nursey says. His fingers are splayed on Dex’s back, his thumb drawing small circles. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” Dex says. “Yes.” He scoots closer to Nursey. “No.”

“Okay,” Nursey says. He’s still holding him tightly. “It’s okay.”

*

“I don’t even know where all this stuff came from,” Nursey says as he pushes open the attic door.

“Well, let me know if you need any more help, you hear?” Bitty calls from downstairs. “Jack and I are gonna be in the kitchen.”

Dex looks up when Nursey comes in and sets down his last box by the door.

“There are two beds and you’re sitting on the floor?” Nursey asks.

“Yeah, Nurse, I’m sitting on the floor,” Dex says. He doesn’t add the _fucking fight me_ , but it’s heavily implied.

“Huh,” Nursey says and flops down next to him with a quiet huff.

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

The last couple of days were strange.

Bitty has been stress-baking for the last two weeks and Dex was right there with him more often than not, because, well, people are leaving and everything’s changing, and it didn’t seem this momentous last year, but now he’s moving into the attic with Nursey and they’re leaving for the summer, but this year he isn’t actually happy to finally get away from Nursey. Truth be told, he wasn’t happy to get away from Nursey last year either.

He might have even missed Nursey a little bit. He’ll miss him even more this year.

Hauling all of his stuff to the Haus wasn’t that much of an issue. Jack came by for graduation and he’s sticking around with Bitty until everyone’s left and the two of them didn’t mind helping them out. And it did help that Jack has a car. As far as Dex knows it’s just them now. Him and Nursey, and Bitty and Jack. Dex hugged Chowder goodbye about two hours ago. He nearly cried when he said goodbye to Lardo, Ransom and Holster. They all promised that they’d come back for their first game of the season, but that’s still months away.

Dex’s parents will be here in about two hours. He’s never wanted to stay anywhere as much as he wants to stay at Samwell right now.

Nursey rests his head on Dex’s shoulder. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Dex says.

He can’t really believe they’re here just yet, in the attic, with their boxes, sitting on the floor, exhausted, and excited, and not at all ready to leave.

“How long until your mom gets here?” Dex asks. It sounds an awful lot like, _How much time do we have left?_

“Half an hour. An hour maybe. Depends on traffic.”

Dust dances in a beam of sunlight that lights up the floor at their feet. Dex glances around the room. The walls are bare now, the beds empty. It’s a bit bleak, but this is theirs for the next two years.

“Do you want the bottom bunk?” Nursey asks.

“If I take the bottom bunk, how often are you actually going to sleep in the top bunk?”

“I mean, there isn’t even a ladder.”

“I could get you a ladder,” Dex says. In all honesty, there’s no way in hell that Dex will let Nursey take the top bunk; he’ll break something getting up and down.

“Don’t bother.” Nursey nudges him and gets up to look out the small window. He’s been his usual very-much-chill self during the last few days while everyone else was losing their minds, although Dex saw a few cracks on the surface here and there. He didn’t even have to look all that hard.

It was the middle of the night when Nursey whispered, “I’m going to miss them,” into the darkness of Dex’s room. He couldn’t have known that Dex was still awake as well. Maybe Dex startled him a little when he said, “Me too.”

Nursey stretches and his shirt rides up and– Wait a second. “Is that my shirt?” Dex doesn’t even know why he’s asking. It’s definitely his shirt. It’s the one he won in a raffle at Mike’s Lobster Shack last summer.

Nursey turns around, looks down at the shirt and then back at Dex. “Maybe?” He shrugs. “I needed a shirt this morning.”

“What happened to the shirt you were wearing last night?”

“I guess that’s somewhere,” Nursey waves his hand in the vague direction of the door, “downstairs, in your suitcase, maybe.”

Dex rolls his eyes. “Are you telling me that I’m now the not-so-proud owner of some indie hipster band shirt?”

“Yo, Dex, quit harshing my vibes.”

“What does that even _mean_?”

“It means don’t go all Mr. Grumpy Face on me, we have, like, half an hour, there are far better faces you could be making right now.”

Dex can feel his cheeks going hot. Honestly, it’s hard not to blush with the way Nursey is looking at him. With intent.

“That’s better,” Nursey says.

“Shut up,” Dex says.

Nursey laughs, sits back down in front of Dex and leans closer. “You know,” he says, “if you want it back–”

Dex kisses him to shut him up and then says, “I don’t mind. Keep it.”

“I could take it off at least for a little while,” Nursey says, hands slowly wandering up Dex’s thighs. “Or…” He sits up and tugs at Dex’s shirt, leans forward a little further and then loses his balance and suddenly Dex has Nursey plastered against him.

“That was real smooth.” Dex lies back with a huff and Nursey has no choice but to follow, head pillowed on Dex’s chest.

There are more comfortable places than wooden floors and even though it’s only May it’s hot as hell up in the attic and having Nursey on top of him isn’t helping either, because Nursey is two hundred pounds and a fucking furnace, but, if given the choice, Dex would rather stay right here, exactly like this, than go back to Maine. _I don’t wanna go home_ sits heavily on the tip of his tongue. He knows it’s ridiculous. He’ll be back in no time.

“I can’t believe that we’re gonna live in the same house as Chowder,” Nursey says, “and all those pies.” He looks up. “Dex, Bitty’s leaving next year, you need to learn how to make pies like him.”

Dex doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to think about Bitty leaving right now or ever.

“Yo,” Nursey says, “Dex.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll–”

“Nursey, your mom’s here!” Bitty calls from downstairs.

“Seriously?” Nursey asks. He sits up, unwilling, leans down again, kisses Dex, who’s too surprised to kiss him back, and then clambers to his feet. “There goes that half hour.” He grabs Dex’s hand and pulls him to his feet. “Are you coming downstairs?”

“Yeah, sure.” Dex makes for the door, cursing when he stubs his toe on a box.

“Wait,” Nursey says and tugs at his hand, tugs until they’re close enough so he can put his arms around him. “I’ll call you tonight. And I’ll see you in June.”

“I can’t wait for the month of total radio silence in between.”

“Oh, you wish. I’ll send a carrier pigeon. At least twice.”

“I’ll be on the lookout.”

“Shit,” Nursey says. He kisses Dex. “This was easier last year, wasn’t it?”

Last year they parted with companionable pats on the shoulder and a, _See you on the flipside, Poindexter_. Dex steals another kiss before he opens the attic door. Yeah. It was easier last year.

But Nursey’s right. They’ll see each other in June when Nursey is coming up to Maine. Dex won’t be going to New York, he still has to work for the rest of the summer and he’s already taking a week off when Nursey’s visiting, but that’s okay. Maybe he’ll manage to save up some money, maybe he’ll manage to go next summer.

Bitty smiles at them from the kitchen when they get downstairs. “She’s outside. Had to take phone call, she said.”

“‘Course she’s on the phone,” Nursey mutters as he wanders out the door, Dex at his heels.

Dex has met Nursey’s mom before, once, and only in passing after a game last December. “She’s trying to make up for missing family weekend,” Nursey said to Chowder before he slipped out of the locker room.

Now she’s out front and Dex is once again struck by how much Nursey looks like her. She waves at the them when she sees them and points at her phone with an apologetic smile.

“Clients,” Nursey only says as he waves back at his mom.

Dex waves as well. He feels slightly out of place.

Nursey shifts, sighs, and leans against Dex. Dex nearly jumps a step to the right, but Nursey’s mom isn’t even looking in their direction.

Nursey’s fingers curl around his wrist. “Dex,” he says. “Would it be cool if I told her? About us?”

“Why are you telling me that, like, thirty seconds before you’re about to do it?”

“Just say no if you don’t want me to, it’s chill.”

“I… No. I mean, yes, whatever, tell her,” Dex says. “She’ll be fine with it, right?” He can’t help but ask. Because what if she’s not? He can only imagine what his own parents would say. Actually, he really doesn’t want to imagine that.

“My mom has a _wife_.”

“Right.” Dex actually talked to Nursey’s stepmom when she skyped Nursey a couple of weeks ago. Apparently she travels a lot for work. When she called Nursey she was in Japan.

“Dex…” Nursey plants a kiss on Dex’s cheek, lips brushing against his skin when he says, “Chill.”

Dex tries. He feels like he’s getting a little better at it.

*

Dex extracts himself from a gaggle of his cousins, mumbling something about getting something more to eat. In truth he wouldn’t eat another bite of anything even if you paid him. Okay, maybe if you paid him _a lot_ … Anyway. Three of his five uncles have come by with their wives and kids and, in one case, grandkids, for the Fourth of July.

Fireworks are starting in two hours. Dex is pretty much ready to go to bed.

Some of his cousins have been trying to rope him into playing football with them for hours but after eating his own weight in various baked and fried foods, he’s refusing to move more than strictly necessary. Dex has been listening in on his dad and his mom’s brother talking about baseball instead, then the conversation moved on to politics and Dex got up. His cousins were on him in an instant and he only barely got away.

He walks around the house and sits down on the front porch, his family loud in the backyard, their neighbours loud in their own backyards. Kids are laughing and shouting, across the street Sally Evans is still barbecuing, and one house over the Andersons’ Golden Retriever is darting about the front yard, running after the sticks that the Andersons’ grandkids are throwing for him.

Dex pulls out his phone. He’s been texting Nursey all day, although Nursey’s response rate has been varying wildly. Sometimes Dex gets a reply ten seconds after he sends off a text, sometimes it takes half an hour, an hour even.

Nursey is in California. He visited Chowder two days ago, now he and his family are staying with friends of his stepmom’s. Nursey did try to talk Dex into coming along to see Chowder, said, “You know, I could–”

“No,” Dex said so loudly that he had his entire family staring at him with wide eyes. Dex quickly retreated to his room.

Look, he knew where Nursey was going with that and he didn’t want Nursey’s money. Or his moms’ money. Whatever. He would have loved to go to California to see Chowder, sure, but not like this. Anyway, Dex has to be back at work bright and early tomorrow morning.

There’s a text from Nursey waiting for him. From a minute ago.

Instead of texting back, Dex calls him.

They haven’t talked in a couple of days. Nursey caught him on Skype a few days ago, just before midnight, and Dex fell asleep on him twenty minutes into their call. Nursey wouldn’t stop chirping him about it the day after. And he took screenshots – _blackmail material_.

Nursey answers on the second ring. “Dex,” he shouts.

Someone laughs.

“His boyfriend,” someone else says in the background. His mom?

“Oh, that’s the infamous boyfriend?”

“I’m leaving,” Nursey says and the background noise, the rustling, the chatter, the laughter, dies down a moment later. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry, they’ve had way too much wine, you know how it goes. They’ve been at it since we had lunch.”

“Having fun?”

“Yeah, I mean… it’s chill. You know. California.”

Dex knows nothing whatsoever about the chill-levels of California, so he only says, “Huh.”

“How’s Maine?”

“Maine’s fine,” Dex says. He wants to say, _I miss you_ , but he’s not that sappy, he just isn’t, and he’s not sure how else to say it, so he leaves it at that.

“And you managed to escape that army of cousins,” Nursey says. “That’s pretty impressive.”

Dex has told him about the cousins. Some of them were here for the weekend when Nursey was visiting in June, although Nursey didn’t get much of a chance to spend any time with them. Dex mostly made sure that they were far, far away from the house while Nursey was here. He took Nursey to the beach, into town, anywhere where they had a few minutes – or a few hours – to themselves. At night Nursey ignored the air mattress on the floor and crawled into bed with Dex, the sheets kicked off, their hands wandering.

Dex misses those hands. He thinks about them embarrassingly often. It’s been less than two weeks since Dex took Nursey to the airport, since Nursey hugged him goodbye for half an hour, since he last had Nursey’s hands on him.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Nursey says.

All Dex can do is sigh about it. Summers used to feel like they flew by in a matter of seconds. This one stretches on forever.

“It’s just another month,” Nursey says, like he’s reading Dex’s goddamned mind.

That month feels like a fucking year. Dex is starting to get antsy, irritable. As irritable as he used to get around Nursey back at Samwell. _Irritable is your default setting_ , Nursey would say.

“So,” Dex says, because he doesn’t feel like being needled about his irritableness, “you’ve been talking about me?”

“What? I– No. Maybe a little. I might have mentioned you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dex would never in a billion years admit it, but he likes the thought of it. He likes the thought that at least one of them can go about his life and talk about his boyfriend. He likes that Nursey talks about him. Instead of saying that, he chirps Nursey about it. It seems safer, in a way.

Nursey makes his patented _Dex, why can’t you just be chill about it_ noise. “Okay, so, the thing is… When I was at your place, I might have stolen your Samwell Hockey shirt.”

“I noticed,” Dex says.

“You’ll get it back, I promise.”

Dex shakes his head, because Nursey never gives back his clothes. Dex doesn’t even want him to. “Keep it,” he says. There’s a hoodie with Nursey’s name on it still stuffed into Dex’s suitcase. He wouldn’t wear it around the house; he doesn’t want anyone to ask questions he wouldn’t know how to answer. But it’s there. And Dex likes that it’s there.

“Anyway,” Nursey says, “I might have been wearing that shirt. And my mom’s friends kinda know that my name isn’t Poindexter.”

Wood creaks as Dex’s little sister comes up the steps on the side of the front porch. Little isn’t a good word to describe her, though. Amy is seventeen and not at all little; she’s nearly six feet tall. “There you are.”

Being home, having the house full of people, with the garden overrun with screaming kids on the lookout for people who’ll play football with them, a quiet minute is obviously hard to come by. Dex should have expected that someone would sneak up on him sooner rather than later. Amy isn’t even the nosiest person in the house, but Amy is a worrier. She probably just wanted to check on him.

And Dex knows that he should get back to the party. He didn’t even mean to call Nursey. “I gotta go,” he says to Nursey. “Amy’s come to drag me back to the party.”

Amy smirks and sits down next to him.

“Call me again sometime, Poindexter.”

“I’ll try,” Dex says.

“You’d better.”

Dex says goodbye, hoping he doesn’t sound as hopelessly in love as he feels. He knew he had a problem when his heart started hammering every time Nursey even so much as looked in his direction. It still happens, only now it’s not accompanied by dread anymore, and it doesn’t just happen when Nursey looks at him. It happens when Nursey touches him, when he hears Nursey’s voice. Although now, even though they saw each other two weeks ago, hearing his voice isn’t enough anymore. Dex is honestly starting to wonder how Bitty and Jack do this.

Is it too early to wonder what’s going to happen when they graduate? What if they end up in different cities? Dex doesn’t even know where exactly he wants to end up. Somewhere close to Nursey. If he’s still with Nursey at that point.

Yeah, it probably is too early to think about what’s going to happen two years down the line.

“One of your Samwell guys?” Amy asks. She’s never been one to pry, thankfully. If Dex told her that it’s none of her business, she’d shrug and move on with her life.

Dex looks at her. She could keep a secret. A big one. He’s starting to get tired of carrying this around with him every single second of every single day while he’s home. “I was talking to Nursey,” Dex says.

“God, you should invite him to come back soon.” Amy grins. “He’s hot.”

Dex looks down at his feet, at the old wood, then at the dry grass in their front yard.

Of all the people in his family, Amy is the only one he can imagine telling. She wouldn’t go blabbing about it to anyone. There is a chance that his parents would be fine with it if he told them about Nursey, but Dex isn’t ready to actually take that chance.

“Amy, he’s…” _My boyfriend_. Dex folds his arms across his chest, his fingers still curled around his phone. “Nursey and I, we’re…” _Dating_. He takes a deep breath. “We’re together.”

Amy whistles quietly and pulls him into a hug. “Holy shit. I mean, wow, seriously, wow, but in a good way, I promise,” she says. There’s a beat, then she asks, “Are you telling mom and dad?”

“Not anytime soon.”

Amy pulls away and nods. Zips her lips shut. She gives him a pat on the back that would make Holster proud. “Thanks for telling me.” She snorts. “You know, you’re super lucky. He’s way out of your league. He’s probably a league of his own.”

She’s just teasing, but she’s not entirely wrong. Dex rolls his eyes. “Thanks.”

He takes a deep breath and it seems a little easier than it did five minutes ago.

*

The drive down to Samwell feels longer than it ever has before.

Dex thought about asking his mom to take him back a few days early, but he can really use the money he got for working a few days extra, so he pushed the thought away. Nursey is back already, called Dex last night to tell him how creepy the Haus is when it’s empty – “I swear, Dex, there are ghosts in this attic.”

About twenty minutes ago, Dex got a selfie from Nursey, him and a smiley Bitty on the front steps of the Haus. _Look who just got here :))_

Dex can’t wait to get back.

He copied a few of his mom’s recipes a couple of days ago. He made sure no one was around to witness his frantic scribbling at the kitchen table, did it after everyone had already gone to bed. If anyone had asked, he would have said that they’re for a friend. Dex wants to try them with Bitty, so it’s only half a lie.

Amy wanted to come to Massachusetts, but in the end there wasn’t enough room in the car, so now it’s just Dex and his mom, a suitcase and a bunch of boxes, all of them shoved into the trunk and piled onto the backseat.

“Do you need anything for that house, then?” his mom asked him before they left. “You have furniture, right?” She couldn’t afford to buy him furniture anyway, so Dex only shrugged. As far as he knows they do have everything they need, especially since Bitty moved in. Still, before they left, Dex made sure that his toolbox was in the trunk.

No one’s sitting on the front steps when they drive past the Haus. They park a few spots down and Dex grabs a box that he puts down again two seconds later when the door flies open and Bitty comes rushing outside, frilly apron tied around his waist, and launches himself at Dex.

They talked every now and then during the summer. Bitty mostly sent him recipes for them to try once they’re both back. Dex hugs him, briefly, his eyes still on the front door. Nursey appears a moment later, wearing one of his indie hipster band shirts and that ridiculous green snapback and his grin is so wide and Dex is so in love with him that it hurts.

Nursey shouts, “Yo, Dex,” and Dex lets go of Bitty who moves on to greet Dex’s mom while Dex runs down the sidewalk to hug Nursey.

It’s been over five weeks. Hugging Nursey goodbye at the airport in Portland, Nursey nearly missing his flight because he didn’t want to let go, it seems like all of that happened five years ago.

“I missed you,” Nursey mumbles, his arms tightening around Dex. It sounds so easy when he says it.

Dex breathes in, and out, and says, “I missed you, too.”

“Poindexter, you old softie.”

“Oh my God, shut up.”

“I even missed _that_ ,” Nursey says, pinching Dex’s side. “Bitty’s already made pie. Like, a lot of pie. I don’t know how he does that, I was upstairs for fifteen minutes.”

“He’s quick like that,” Dex says. They’re still hugging. Dex should let go. His mom might be watching, although his mom loves Bitty and is probably sufficiently distracted. When she picked Dex up in May, her and Bitty spent half an hour trading baking tips.

“Such a nice boy,” she said when they got into the car to drive up to Maine. She didn’t ask any questions, no uncomfortable ones at least, even though, somehow, Dex could tell that she wanted to.

The thing is, Dex’s family knows what kind of reputation Samwell has. Dex’s older brother was the one who took a look at the brochure, at the list of clubs, the picture of one of Samwell’s Pride events, and said, “Really, you want to go to _that_ school?”

Dex told him to piss off.

He did choose Samwell for a reason. For _several_ reasons. For the hockey team. For the scholarship. He knew that Samwell had a good reputation; it’s a great school. He knew it would be different from home. And maybe some part of him decided, even though it was never really _that_ important to him before, that here he could be someone other than Billy Poindexter who is “just _so_ unlucky with girls.”

He lets go of Nursey and glances over his shoulder. His mom is still talking to Bitty.

“Yo, Dex,” Nursey says. “Did you bring your toolbox?”

Dex narrows his eyes at him, at that bright smile, the crinkles around Nursey’s eyes that he gets when he smiles this broadly. “What did you break?”

“Okay, first of all, it was an accident, and–” Nursey tilts his head, his eyes dipping down to Dex’s chest. “Hey,” Nursey says, “nice shirt.”

It’s one of Nursey’s. It’s a _Star Wars_ shirt that Dex probably appreciates far more than Nursey ever will. He’s never seen Nursey wear it outside of his dorm room. It probably doesn’t fit his aesthetic or something ridiculous like that. Dex stole it months ago and he was starting to think that Nursey might have not even noticed that he took it.

“Thanks,” Dex says. “I’m keeping it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this fic in my drafts for a hundred years and I'm so glad that I finally managed to post it. 
> 
> I'm @zimmermaenner on tumblr if you wanna say hello :)
> 
> And, as always, kudos and comments are very much appreciated!


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